"There is a clear difference of $200-300 million between the figures of the central bank and the BoI," said Debapriya Bhattacharya, executive director of Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).

"The Bangladesh Bank statistics is more acceptable than anyone else's," he said while presenting the Independent Review of Bangladesh's Development (IRBD) at the CPD office in Dhaka yesterday.

Those who are engaged in promoting foreign investment should not be involved in the estimate process and there should be a clear list showing how much money comes from which sources, he said.

According to the IRBD, despite the recent BoI announcement about approaching a billion-dollar mark in foreign investment, Bangladesh received a net foreign investment of $490 million during July-March of the FY2005-06. Of this, $470 million came as FDI (foreign direct investment) while the rest as portfolio investment.

However, a considerable amount of FDI will probably come soon primarily through investments by some telecom companies, including new investment by SingTel, reinvestment by Orascom, and registration fee of Warid Telecom.

The latest available data has made it clear that a huge amount of foreign exchange has been repatriated every month. According to the January 2006 balance of payment (BOP), as much as $57.6 million was repatriated in a single month against a mere FDI inflow of $63.1 million.

It seems that the Tata investment will not come on-stream before FY2007, the IRBD said.

As the investment proposals of the Asian Energy and Tata were publicised heavily, these should be settled quickly whatever the decision might be, Debapriya said.

"An independent expert body should be formed to review the issue" for the sake of transparency in the process, he said, adding that future foreign investment in Bangladesh will depend on how these proposals are settled.

Trade deficit has gone down and the current account showed a surplus but the overall BOP turned bad, he said.

It appears that the rise of petroleum price in the world market has not been the major reason for the fragility in the BOP scenario because it is the financial account, not the trade account, which has deteriorated, Debapriya added.